


All the Silence I've Become

by gunpowdereyes



Series: When the Nights Are Cold [1]
Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gunpowdereyes/pseuds/gunpowdereyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are only so many ways to erase (be)longing, and half of them don’t work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Silence I've Become

**Author's Note:**

> Set at the Nashville stop on the Listen Up! tour, because in my head (where all things count the most), Chris was absolutely at that show. 
> 
> Warning: 118% Crisscolfer fic, but mentions of and implied, indeterminate *something* with That Guy.

Chris has alternated between not thinking about it and thinking about nothing else, his heart drawn tight in his chest.

It drums in him, his fingers restless on the table in front of him when they’re having lunch, and Will looks at him, fond, understanding. That’s the hardest look for some reason, as if Will can read his mind — but no, Chris has felt close to that power, once. Before. This, different, is Chris wearing his feelings like a bright, familiar scarf, and Will reading them accurately. Chris can never quite meet that knowing look head-on.

He hasn’t talked to Darren in a week. After the high of the party, Chris’s birthday had been a bittersweet affair of staying just far enough apart, all they ever do these days, as if Chris doesn’t feel the absence of contact as strongly as he ever felt the touch. Chris texted him to wish him good luck before his first show in San Francisco, and Darren had shot back _thank you_ ; nothing betrayingly more, nothing less.

He gets in the back at the Nashville show before he can even process that he’s there, casually using his status and assured that Darren won’t hear about it. Chris thought hard about telling him, weighed if his presence would change Darren’s performance, how he’d feel if it did (how he’d feel if it didn’t). He became an egotistical teenage girl when he wasn’t looking, he supposes, and knows the thought would make Darren smile. In the end he decided ignorance was kindness, if not bliss. In the end he decided that if it was too much, if he couldn’t take it or face it, it didn’t have to change anything for Darren. What else does he have to give to Darren, now?

He texts Will, as he waits, says it’s something he has to do. Says he’ll be back before long. Will says he understands, fucking _does_ understand, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Chris has travelled with him, slept next to him, cared about him, committed to him (bit by bit, pieces here and there, the only way he can), and Will still understands. Because Will is a pretty good guy, at the end of the day, and is perfectly clear about what he’s doing. What _they’re_ doing. No grand romantic statements, nothing so clean and pure about him, so exhilirating and full of hope that it hurts. No breathless promises that no one could hope to keep. Just a regular guy. A regular, good guy.  All Chris might have ever asked for, once.

\---

The show is incredible. Darren is a thousand things at once, what he always is but turned up to max, threatening to burst him at the seams. Chris sees the joy in his eyes, the flash of disbelief at the adoring crowd screaming just for him, knows that look will cross his face over and over again on this tour; over and over again in his life. He never quite believes that he’s worth so much. Sees the passion he pours into every song, old and new, ridiculous or painful. Sees it, feels it like a knife-twist in his stomach, too hot and too much, when it becomes about _him_. _  
_

The songs Darren sang to him, for him, a hundred times. Chris requested them over and over again, feeling the lift and stretch within him. Having all of Darren’s attention, all of his skill and heart, channeled just for him. He knows he’s probably there in some of the other new songs too, that pulse of bitterness, of anger, nothing that Darren can wear easily but he can’t — he just can’t listen for it. It's too much already to see it in the heavy lines of Darren’s shoulders.

The frustration of it, the hurt they were nursing, was tempered by so much joy, when it was all new. _Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel something you just can’t articulate?_ Darren sings that now with his heart on a spit, like he’s still surprising himself with, yeah, how hard that is to feel. How much nothing there is, when you actually can’t just say it, and how the nothingness grows to swallow up everything that was good, inch by unforgiving inch. What could be left on the other side of such a vast, empty space. _Just want to tell you I love you_.

Chris doesn’t know what he feels, but he watches from somewhere outside of himself as Darren starts  _I Don't Mind_ , texts Will to say he isn’t sure when he’ll be back, get dinner without him. And Will understands, of course. Tells him good luck, and be careful. Be careful. As if being careful isn’t at the root of everything that sits slightly wrong inside of him, these days.

Will doesn’t know. Who really knows? That something meteor-bright, ripping through the sky of Chris’s life, flamed out to darkness for no particularly good reason. No dramatic meltdown, no infidelities, no endless fights, just Chris getting so fucking tired, and Darren’s eyes, terrible and knowing, as he let it happen.

He relinquishes his grip on the balcony railing, fingers numb, and walks backstage to wait.

\---

Darren glows, when he finally comes back. He’s still jittery, caught between the performance high and exhaustion, so much wrenched out of him every night that it’s hard to believe he’s still standing. Darren has never been able to feel without feeling _everything_. He’s never been good at hiding. Chris knows he’s been surrounded by his friends and family and bandmates on this tour, surrounded by crazed adoring fans who for the most part really do care about him, knows he probably doesn’t get a second to himself and that he’s probably grateful for it because — Chris can tell, Chris can always, always tell — Darren is so very alone.

(Chris doesn’t flatter himself, it’s just that after being everything to one person for so long, after guarding it and treasuring it and feeling it so fucking intensely that it burned, he knows what’s left behind. Loneliness thrums in Chris, always, he feels it behind his teeth when he goes to sleep at night, feels it in the tips of his fingers when he climbs out of bed every morning. It doesn’t get better, he knows. They both know. It just gets different.)

Darren pauses in the doorway, gaze unwavering on Chris and mouth slightly parted. Chris feels the dumb rush of blood evacuating his brain. They’ve been together more times than Chris could count if he was given a year to do it, but he has never been able to escape this feeling, this intense-dizzying-freefall when they’re together. He did get better at hiding it, although right now he doesn’t bother. It’s not as if they don’t know each other. It’s not as if they’re not both feeling the same thing.

"I knew you must be here," Darren says, tone unreadable even if his face betrays him — there is hurt, and weariness, but also happiness, somewhere in there. Also something that was only ever theirs, that he hasn't yet been able to bury away. Chris’s traitor heart jumps a little to see it. "I guess it sounds kind of creepy, but … I kind of _felt_ you. You know?”

Chris knows; nods. He doesn’t say that he feels Darren all the fucking time. There are only so many ways to erase (be)longing, and half of them don’t work.

"You were amazing," Chris says. Darren ducks his head, half-smiles. Chris knows the sheer earnestness in his pleasure, and how hard he’s fighting to protect himself from letting Chris see. Chris thinks he has never hated anything in his fucking life more than this.

"Thanks. I’m … I’m glad you came." He meets Chris’s eyes then, and Chris as ever feels knocked flat, too stupid to move.

"Did you think maybe I wouldn’t?" And isn’t that a terrible thought, and wouldn’t it be valid, because didn’t Chris just watch Darren prepare to take a huge meaningful step in his life and respond by taking the fuck off? He swallows. "At all?"

Darren shrugs. This is the part of him that other people don’t see, soft and sad and serious. “I was hoping, I just — I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he says, and he wouldn’t have, Chris knows, would have just filed it away and lived with it and wished for something different, and why does this hurt so fucking much. “But I’m —” he swallows. “I’m really fucking glad, Chris.”

"I wouldn’t have missed it," Chris says quietly. In that moment he knows it’s true; as much as he doubted if he could/would/should, he was never going to miss this. If he’d been abducted by aliens and deposited on the VIP balcony in Cleveland or died and reincarnated as a breathless teenage girl in the front row, he would have seen this one way or another. He can read it in the quirk of Darren’s smile — relief, but also confirmation of something within — somewhere in him Darren knew it too.

He doesn’t think about what happens if these tethers to one another finally start to break. Can’t even pin it down to a thought he can examine, and doesn’t that just imply a thousand other things that Chris is not ready or able to look directly at. Not yet.

Darren is in front of him, and Chris can smell him, warm and sweaty and so achingly familiar, and he knows how this is going to go. Knows this is why they don’t get to stray too close, knows that they are incapable and bent helplessly towards one another, internal shift of gravity they can’t control. Chris knows as he drops his coat and touches Darren’s hips, knows this is probably the worst thing either of them could do, knows that there are paths to healing what they’ve done to each other and none of them originate here. But Darren kisses him, searching and hungry, and who needs a path to anywhere if they’re both already home …?


End file.
